MAJ John Sawyer served as headquarters and headquarters company (HHC) commander and operations officer (S3) with 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division in Tall Afar, Taji and Mosul, Iraq during 2004 and 2005 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this May 2010 interview, MAJ Sawyer discusses his experiences during the Gulf War as a Marine reservist, the changes he observed in the way reservists are treated by the Active Duty component in both the Marines and the army, and the challenges of dealing with the apathy of the Iraqi people when trying to fight the insurgency. MAJ Sawyer concludes his interview with the observation, "The resiliency and initiative of the American service member cannot be overstated. I think back to World War II when we landed and they were having problems at Normandy with the hedgerows. They crafted a blade to put on the front of the tank to be able to clear through those; they just adapted on the fly. [In Iraq] There were numerous instances of company commanders -- [the enemy] was starting to transport stuff in taxis. Any time the Americans came near a taxi in their sector they would just pop the trunk or they would remove the trunk off the taxi. Just by working with the locals who were saying, "Hey, we're noticing this," a company commander or the intelligence folks identified the threat or the process of how they were transporting their weapons and the company commander used his initiative to work with the locals and we were able to not necessarily defeat it completely but at least force him to change his tactics."

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